Tom Kettle has seen enough evil in his life. The 66-year-old Irishman has retired from his career as a police detective and moved to a small lean-to adjoining a castle in the town of Dalkey. He's relieved to be done with his days in the Garda Síochána, Ireland's national police service: "All his working life he had dealt with villains. After a few decades of that your faith in human nature is in the ground. It's a premature burial, predating your own."
The Garda, unfortunately, isn't done with him. In his new novel, Old God's Time, Sebastian Barry follows Tom as his life is thrown even further into disarray when he's confronted with a past he'd rather forget. It's a relentlessly bleak, stunning novel about how the effects of violence and abuse can reverberate for years and across generations.
